First Tuesday – Ireland

Some people may think that the world has gone mad when they hear about sites like PawSpot, a social networking site for dogs, but the website is actually an example of how businesses can leverage networks and develop bonds with consumers.

The key focus in many markets is retaining customers and developing communities is one way to achieve this. As pointed out in a previous episode of BBC’s In Business radio show, quite often the cost of keeping a customer on your books far outweighs the cost involved in creating such a community.

Funny to see how networking can be flipped on its head and used as a business tool in this fashion.

Technorati Tags: First Tuesday, PawSpot

The RTE website describes Raging Bulls as a series that “lifts the lid on some of the more colourful and controversial Irish business stories of recent times and the people behind them.” It’s a fascinating show and has proved to be compulsive viewing thus far.

One quote that proved to be quite memorable from last night’s show was that of a definition of an entrepreneur:

The definition of an entrepreneur is someone who gets beaten up on his way down 12 alleys, yet still has the confidence to walk down the 13th.

Technorati Tags: First Tuesday, Raging Bulls, RTE

We heard about a sly way people abuse online registrations as a form of networking which is pretty devious. The increasing use of online registration for events has seen people add their names to lists even though they will never attend. However in the runup to the event, anyone that is actually going will see that person’s name listed when they scan through the list. Should the list also remain posted after the event then anyone that happens to stumble across it will also think that they attended.

It sounds pretty pathetic, but then again how many times have you walked away from an event cursing yourself for not meeting someone in particular because you were too busy or didn’t see them at it. We wouldn’t recommend it as a networking strategy, but we can see why some people do it.

Technorati Tags: First Tuesday, Networking

Very interested to read on Guerilla Innovation about KLM, a Dutch airline, creating an online community for their passengers doing business in China.

Club China also encourages its members to share calendar and travel information in order to make it easier for them to meet up in China.

It’s a clever way to bring their customers together, but more importantly it recognises the traits that they share and encourages them to interact, effectively creating a community.

We find it amusing because most of the time when you come back from a trip, you’d be more likely to complain about the person beside you who kept getting up to go to the toilet, rather than talk about a new business opportunity. Best of all for KLM, when people are asked where they met, they’ll always bring up the airline, thus creating citizen advertisers in the process.

Perhaps Aer Lingus will dream up a similar service soon?

Technorati Tags: First Tuesday, Networking, KLM

Mike Santoro points us in the direction of CardScan, a handy way to organise your personal contacts by electronically entering them into your CRM system. It looks a bit like a laminator, but it could free up some space in your rolodex or address book.

Technorati Tags: Business Cards, First Tuesday

We’ve started to read the Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channel. One of the most interesting blogs is ‘Referrals for Life‘. Last week Patrick Carney talked about the importance of diversity within your network. Highlighting the problem of restricting your networking to a similar socioeconomic group, he points out the following:

The problem with this is that when we surround ourselves with people who have similar contacts, it may be difficult to make connections with new people or the companies we desire to do business with.

By restricting yourself in such a fashion, you’re simply limiting the potential of your networking ability.

Technorati Tags: First Tuesday, Networking